Cue the eerie vocalizing, there’s some spooky happenings afoot. It’s been a minute since we last watched a woman run panicked through a remote location to the tune of haunting vocalizations. ( Yellowjackets, please return to us soon!) But Alex Garland’s latest film, the interestingly titled Men, is promising to hold us over. A24 released the very first teaser for the horror drama and it is dripping with sinister energy.
The film stars newly-minted Academy Award nominee Jessie Buckley as a woman who escapes to the English countryside following a tragedy. However, her escape for peace is, in reality, nothing short of a waking nightmare.
The film also stars Rory Kinnear and Paapa Essiedu. We didn’t get a great look at what exactly is haunting Harper, Buckley’s character. However Kinnear appears briefly at the edge of the property, disappearing after Harper asks, “What are you doing here?” It certainly begs the questions: Who is he? What is he doing there? Where did he go? And why? Why is this happening? Why do I know I’ll be terrified watching this film? Well, that I already know the answer to.
Here’s what the film is about from A24:
In the aftermath of a personal tragedy, Harper (Jessie Buckley) retreats alone to the beautiful English countryside, hoping to have found a place to heal. But someone or something from the surrounding woods appears to be stalking her. What begins as simmering dread becomes a fully-formed nightmare, inhabited by her darkest memories and fears in visionary filmmaker Alex Garland’s (Ex Machina, Annihilation) feverish, shape-shifting new horror film.
In addition to the teaser, A24 released a spooky poster for Men.
As if the image on the poster alone isn’t already incredibly spooky—featuring Buckley standing at the entrance to what looks like a scaly tunnel—if you look at it closely it looks like she’s standing in the center of a skull. Yikes! And then there’s the tagline: “What haunts you will find you.”
I, for one, am already properly scared and intrigued. Alex Garland wrote and directed Men, so I am firmly ready for a lot of interesting twists and turns. And maybe, if we’re really lucky, a little Oscar Isaac? Probably, not but I am holding out hope anyway.
